Welcome To The Hermit's Desk

I do not have OCD, nor do my intrusive thoughts involve hurting other people. Still, having logged plenty of man-hours wrestling down intrusive thoughts of harm to myself, this article and the comments were not only interesting, but seriously useful.

Also brought up in the article, co-morbidity (i.e - presenting with multiple illnesses), as I've been - despite my chagrin, correctly - re-diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. (You had it right, Matrixx!)

Treatment lays mostly in learning how to redirect your thoughts and feelings v.s your actions. Really good things to add to the treatment I'm already on. I am not unaware of these concepts, but it's like I totally forgot them.

Thus the whole HOLYSHIT THESE COMMENTS!!!

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"The brain does not register negatives; it only processes the action associated with the negative. If, instead of saying, "don't think that," you say, "think this instead," you can weaken the neuronal connections responsible for the OCD and strengthen others at your will."

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"You are not your thoughts; you are your reaction to them."

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"It's not necessarily the thought that is the problem, it's how much meaning and weight we ascribe to it that can cause anxiety or worsening intrusive thoughts."

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"That is what obsession is. The never ending stream of thoughts, good or bad.

The ones you notice, quite simply, are the ones that trigger anxiety. You zero in on them, instead of pushing them aside. You will examine every single instance of behavior or cognition that might relate to that particular thought in an attempt to find an answer because that seems like the only way to make it go away.

But here's the thing. f**k the thoughts. They will not go away. What you can control, however, is your emotional response. How you do that is up to you. But what you have to do is find a way to tackle the anxiety because beyond a point the deconstruction going on in your head will cross into the absurd and that, my friend, is where madness lies."

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"She [my therapist] made the analogy of a wheel moving back and forth until it created a rut which it couldn't get out of."

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"If you keep performing the ritual, you reinforce the belief that the ritual is preventing catastrophe, instead of teaching yourself that nothing bad will happen if you don't do it.

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All this on a day when my therapist asked me what life would be like without Nightmare Week. "I don't know," I replied casually. "They're nightmares. They come and go as they please. I can't choose what I dream."

She suggested that it was possible to remove the nightmares, to wiggle free from this last bit of PTSD.

I call bullshit....but the idea is intriguing. So okay, Miss Therapist, let's see what you've got to suggest and I'll give it my best shot. Worst case scenario? I still have nightmares but have learned a few tricks to deal with my thoughts in a healthy, non-destructive manner.

**NOTE FOR SELF: Also must look up term "neural plasticity", as my therapist put it. It might apply.

This for the personal matters...

Whenever you were in the ward the last few times and Jesse explained here what had happened, it left the impression of either anything medically didn't function on your body as planned (effects from emergency meds or anything else), although it actually should, and that drove you to madness, which resulted in the things you did then to enforce the intended state, or it was a pure breakthrough of emotions you manage to lock away most of the time, but which caught you in a moment with a few times more the intensity and that ended hyper-fatally.I don't know if there was panic in there - you might know this better -, judging from the outside as the description sounds like, I'd guess there was. (I don't have too much experience with panic and anxiety.)

Saying, I wouldn't see the problem in such situations happening, that will be inevitable, much more interesting should be the question how to behave in such situations? What are means to calm oneself down? I know "self-confidence" in those matters as a means - you know, feeling, even if it's the only thing you're experienced in, but then you're firm in keeping control over this. Whatever comes, you still maintain your sense of reality and say to the devil "Fuck you!" with power in your voice. Nothing else except your free will and your conscious state will take control over what you do with your hands....Well, but this is a character question, I assume. It requires some self-assurance in knowing what you do.A walking one-man-army who relies on no-one with the proper cognitive intelligence can do this method.But not everyone is a walking one-man-army.

One last thing: I think, in your case, worth looking at is the topic of thinking "no being enough", of being less worth than others, of being a failure, and always needing to prove people differently.'Cause - was it the first, maybe the 2nd time of taking the blade back into your hands? -, it seemed like you felt you were disappointing someone's expections, and meaning not only your own that you measure yourself by.Such situations, if you always in a subtle way feel like you need to prove anything, but you see yourself being unable to, being mentally weak or anything, this generates pressure to satisfy the expectations, and it may result in such things that it ended in previously.Expectations you can meet or which are easy to do for you, that may be okay if you push yourself a little to meet them, but things you totally see yourself unable to, I don't know, I image they can result in causing panic if you see you can't meet them.

...this for neural plasticity.

"Neural plasticity" is a term known to me. Now that's a topic where things get really interesting...Actually, the topic circulates in general about "learning" in link with the physical abilities of the brain. Speaking, the neurologic base of learning, brain structures forming.People, even into high age, basically aren't unable to create new structures in their brain - it appears every time anything in your life changes: New home, new job, new hobby, new preferences, new partner, things you always liked to do but never found time or confidence to do, physical issues, death of somebody close, addition to the family - well, you see, the range is pretty big.Mostly, that happens if surrounding circumstances force you to adapt yourself and rearrange your concepts of how to manage everything of the small things in life.In general, it means: Even an old dog is able to learn new tricks. This is the thing really in short.But, neural plasticity is dependent on the person and its character. People who feel like it's "enough" in their life they have seen, they don't put much effort into acquiring new abilities or restructure their brains.Also, it is very much dependent on own handicaps - such as diseases, such as age (got already told, learning a new thing in your 40s is much harder than in your 20s e.g.), such as gaps in the cognitive intelligence (learning disabilities, lowered overall intelligence), such as drug use, such as outside circumstances which don't feed your brain well enough with new informations to process (that's the nail the red fraction always hammers on 'cause poor people can't afford much in a world where intellectual education is very dependent on the money in your pocket).Last thing, I think I got a few expriences on my own with in the unluckiest combination it can get - having a higher capability than others, but then you always get pushed away from trying anything.Higher capability because - if you notice in your twenties, when you go down reading a lot about a special subject, then making practical experiences, and you can't see how quick your brain understands the links, like in 3 months it understands what people need a year or more for, or don't get at all because of fear, and your brain firmly integrates the knowledge into your everyday life knowledge, then you know you brain's actually able to process quite a bit of information. Literally - it wants to. It wants to be fed. That's what it's saying.And if this continues to happen, even though you age and even though you got your handicaps on your brain learning new stuff, then you can really speak of higher capabilities. 'Cause, actually it must surely decrease, but instead it keeps on conquering essences of things in a quick tempo.I don't think this will change too much as the attitude behind towards learning, I see, still hasn't changed very much over time passing. Still I like to be able to do things myself and not be too dependent on others in that.Although progress sometimes is tough, but then there are other times where it strikes like lightening.What I can say from that position is: It really works. Dependent on your potentials, your attitude and your surroundings, very well your brain can restructure tracks in it.

Re: ...this for neural plasticity.

The members of Killing Joke are high school dropouts, all with high IQs because they had mandatory reading and discussions every week, and they were part of the "punk just do it" mentality. Jaz Coleman has an IQ over 190 and has mastered 12 different skills. It's just one example of neural plasticity I can think of.

A master instructor on my team in the service also had a high IQ, two doctorates, and he said the best way to ward off Alzheimer's is to never stop learning. The brain prunes away neural connections we don't use, and the only way to keep the connections strong is to keep using them. Keep learning new things. Keep experiencing new things.

Re: ...this for neural plasticity.

Hm... Against Alzheimer, basically I'd say yes, but it's not a gurantee that you get no disease that attacks your brain. Just saying this for a reason...

Basically what I've previously seen could maybe considered as "learning things later that other people actually learn in an earlier age", but the way it came was just like in a blow. So to say, later moment, but then the brain made jumps literally like gaining three levels at once while others would gain only one.And then again I have things I was capable to understand only by own research which other people would be able to after they've studied with a degree. The whole psychology stuff I know - no, I'm not a studied specialist. The shit started to gather in my past life since I was 13, and then once again a ton of stuff around that time where the teen years of this body started to end and the twenties began.In between, around 17/18, came the political stuff, social sciences and media as a source of mass brainwashing. These days, I find myself partly able to follow complex medical processes and learn about the physical base of what makes out human psyche (the neurological task complex of the brain). - Beside all other more trivial stuff where I'm forced to forge skills for everyday life or just wanting to play a video game (no nextgen stuff)....At least I think, that's not too bad, and I'd guess, this wouldn't work the same way for others.

One way to combat your nightmares might be to learn to identify them as not being realistic inside the dream. Teach your brain to identify flaws in logic instead of reacting to the emotional states. Lucid dreaming. You can literally take control of what happens inside the dream.

It doesn't always happen for me, but when it does it's a lot of fun. It mostly happens if the dream is a "rerun." Once I realize I've seen it all before, I then try to change the outcome. Your subconscious is actually far better and faster at problem-solving. It's getting it to talk to your conscious brain, responsible for decision-making and action, that's the trick.